The Light Between Oceans: A Novel

by M.L. Stedman

He had the impression he was hanging from the sky, not rising from the earth. Very slowly, he turned a full circle, taking in the nothingness of it all. It seemed his lungs could never be large enough to breathe in this much air, his eyes could never see this much space, nor could he hear the full extent of the rolling, roaring ocean. For the briefest moment, he had no edges.

You don’t think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour, and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation.

“Your family’s never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.”

“We can’t rightly ever talk about the future, if you think about it. We can only talk about what we imagine, or wish for. It’s not the same thing.”

But a sliver of uncrossable distance has slipped between them: an invisible, wisp-thin no-man’s-land.

“But it’s not always plain sailing, even when you’ve found the right girl. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul. You never know what’s going to happen: you sign up for whatever comes along. There’s no backing out.”

Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go. Leave the rest to the angels, or the devil or whoever’s in charge of it.”

He stared at her, seized by the sensation that perhaps she didn’t exist. Perhaps none of this existed, for the inches between them seemed to divide two entirely different realities, and they no longer joined.

“Piece of free advice, Blue—never try and work out what’s going on in someone else’s marriage.”

He struggles to make sense of it—all this love, so bent out of shape, refracted, like light through the lens.

The precision of it, the quiet orderliness of the stars, gave him a sense of freedom. There was nothing he was going through that the stars had not seen before, somewhere, some time on this earth. Given enough time, their memory would close over his life like healing a wound. All would be forgotten, all suffering erased.

We live with the decisions we make, Bill. That’s what bravery is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes.”